


Childhood's End

by summers-maclay-lehane (ofstormsandwolves)



Series: Ripper and Anne [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 16:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20312806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofstormsandwolves/pseuds/summers-maclay-lehane
Summary: While Buffy and Ripper try to locate the nearest Hellmouth, Buffy has a run-in with a familiar face.





	Childhood's End

“I have to pick up some things,” Buffy said as they stepped out into the street. 

Most of the people they’d saved had now scattered, and only Lily remained. Ripper stood a little awkwardly between the two young girls, rucksack slung over his shoulder and guitar case in hand.

“That’s fine,” he said, trying to hide his awkwardness.

Buffy turned to Lily, giving her a reassuring smile. “The rent’s paid on my apartment for the next three months if you need a place to crash,” she offered the other girl. “It’s not the nicest place, but it beats sleeping in the streets, right?”

Lily smiled at that. “Yeah, sounds like it does.”

Buffy nodded, almost to herself, and then set off along the sidewalk. Lily walked beside her, while Ripper trailed behind them like a kid who’d been forced to tag along with a sibling. The walk was brief, and the girls chatted quietly as they made their way to Buffy’s building.

It wasn’t far from the diner, Ripper realised, and the building looked shabby and dull from the outside. Once Buffy ushered them inside, he realised that the interior didn’t fare much better. He resisted the urge to wrinkle his nose- he’d be a little hypocritical to turn his nose up at Buffy’s living conditions after he’d been living in various squats since running away from home. So he kept his mouth shut and followed the two girls up the stairs to Buffy’s apartment.

It was tiny. There was one room and a little bathroom off to the side. The grand tour took all of about thirty seconds. The bed took up most of the room, and the kitchenette was miniscule and grubby. Buffy looked a little embarrassed.

Lily, however, was in awe. Ripper’s heart clenched at that. How bad was this kid’s life that a tiny, grubby one-room apartment was the height of living?

“I’m not very good at looking after myself,” he heard Lily admit cautiously.

He watched as Buffy gave the girl a sad smile. “You learn,” she responded a little bitterly.

Ripper watched then as Buffy made her way around the tiny apartment, gathering up her belongings and cramming them into a rucksack. Clothes were jammed in unfolded, a pair of running shoes wedged haphazardly into a gap. A plush pig was stuffed into the top of the bag before Buffy fastened it closed. Its curly tail poked out through a gap. When she was done, Buffy looked to her waitress uniform, tossed on the bed. The nametag was still pinned onto it.

_Anne._

“Go down to the diner tomorrow,” Buffy said suddenly, turning to Lily. “Tell them I sent you. Tell them... Tell them I had to leave, but that you’re taking on my shifts, if that’s alright.”

Lily blinked. “Will they be alright with that?”

Buffy shrugged back. “I don’t see why not. They hired me without even double-checking my name or age.” There was an awkward pause then, before Buffy suddenly moved to hug Lily. “Keep yourself safe, ok?”

The other girl nodded, hugging the slayer back. And then the moment was over and Buffy pulled away. Shouldering her rucksack, and without a word to Ripper, she walked out the door.

* * *

Ripper followed Buffy in silence for several blocks before he finally spoke. “So where are we going?”

Buffy sighed, and stared up at him with tired eyes. “We need to find out where the nearest Hellmouth is, right?”

He nodded, confused. “Yeah, if that’s where you wanted to head.”

Buffy nodded back. “Then we need to find out where that is, don’t we,” she pointed out tiredly. “And you’re not actually a Watcher so we can’t ask the Council for help. Which means we need a place to crash while we work out exactly where we’re headed.”

Ripper could see the logic in that. All they had to go on was that he vaguely knew of a Hellmouth in California. But it could be anywhere in the state, and he didn’t much fancy riding around on a bus until they found it. “So where are we going?”

Buffy came to a stop at a bus stop and promptly stuck her hand out to stop an oncoming bus. As the bus pulled up and opened its doors, she looked up at Ripper. “My house.”

* * *

The Summers family home was as picture perfect as Ripper had imagined. It was in a quiet suburban Los Angeles street lined with equally picture perfect homes. The driveway was occupied by a Jeep, and the curtains were closed as they approached.

“Buffy,” Ripper said slowly, “I thought you said your parents...” He trailed off.

Buffy gave him a wan smile. “Were dead? They are. Everything got left to me. The Council sent some super-duper cleaning team to clean up the mess. I sort of decided to disappear at that point, but this is my house now.”

Ripper watched with a sense of unease as Buffy unlocked the door to her childhood home. The door swung open and there was a long pause as she just stared inside.

“You alright?” Ripper asked quietly, unsure of what to do. Should he comfort her? Should he ignore it and give her some privacy? Already he was certain he could see the twitch of a curtain opposite. Nosy neighbours curious about people sneaking around the neighbourhood at night. Come to think of it, Ripper did have the awful feeling someone was watching them.

There was a deep, shuddering breath from Buffy then, before she stepped over the threshold. Her rucksack slid from her shoulder with a thump and she toed off her shoes before turning to see Ripper still standing on the doorstep. Ignoring the wateriness of her eyes, she frowned at him.

“Don’t tell me you’re a vampire and I have to invite you in,” she told him, giving him a pointed look.

Perplexed, Ripper stepped inside. His rucksack went beside hers, as did his guitar case, and his battered boots joined Buffy’s trainers beneath the coat hooks. Buffy shut the front door and padded through to the kitchen before reappearing only a moment later. She had an odd look on her face.

“I forgot to get food,” she told him, frowning to herself. “I invited you to stay here and didn’t get food.”

Ripper blinked at her. “It’s fine,” he said after a moment. “I’m not hungry.” Well, he was hungry. Starving, actually, but he wasn’t about to tell Buffy that.

Speaking of Buffy, she then promptly burst into tears, shaking her head. “No! No, I have to feed you,” she told him through her tears. “It’s the polite thing to do! Mom always said it was rude to invite someone round and not offer them something to eat!”

Standing in the middle of the hallway, watching the slayer sob, Ripper felt at a loss. He had no idea what to do, what to say. He’d always been a little awkward around kids; he’d been a terrible babysitter when he was Buffy’s age. But it felt wrong to just stand there and do nothing. He shuffled forward to stand in front of her, put a hand out to squeeze her shoulder-

And Buffy barrelled into him, hands fisting in his t-shirt as she sobbed into his chest. He stood there, confused and blinking, and patting her awkwardly on the back. Eventually Buffy pulled away, all puffy-eyed and snotty-nosed, and Ripper tried not to grimace. 

“I think I have some take-out menus somewhere,” she told him quietly. “If that’s ok with you?”

Ripper nodded, unsure what to say, and he instead watched Buffy pad back to the kitchen in search for take-out menus.

* * *

They ate their Chinese takeout in the spotless sitting room. The cable company had clearly cut them off months ago as nobody had been paying the bill, but Ripper had managed to rig the television up for them to find something to watch. The room still smelled of bleach and cleaning products and stale air where the house had stood empty for so long. Photos of Buffy and her parents adorned the walls, and Ripper found his gaze wandering to them occasionally. If the slayer noticed him staring, she didn’t mention it.

When they finished eating, Ripper insisted on helping with the washing up.

“Least I can do,” he said awkwardly when Buffy tried to protest. Just because he didn’t want to live the life his family had planned out for him, didn’t mean he couldn’t be a gentleman from time to time.

They did the washing up in silence, Buffy tense as a spring beside him. When they finally finished the washing up, she turned to Ripper, wide-eyed. “You can take my room if you want,” she told him, wide-eyed.

Ripper blinked. And frowned. “Why?”

She wrung her hands nervously. “It’s just that the spare room was actually kind of Mom’s study, so there isn’t a bed for you to sleep on. I’ll be fine on the couch, though, it’s no problem.”

Of course. Buffy didn’t want to go in her parents’ room, and she didn’t want anyone else in there either. It was fair enough, Ripper supposed. And while he didn’t exactly relish the thought of sleeping on the couch, he wasn’t about to kick Buffy out of her own bed.

“Keep your bed. The couch will be fine,” he told her with a shrug. “Besides, I’ve slept on worse.”

Buffy’s brow furrowed then, like she was about to argue. But surprisingly, she didn’t. “Fine,” she shrugged. “I’ll show you where the bathroom is.”

* * *

That night, Ripper lay on the couch, covered in a blanket and staring at the dark ceiling. Sleep eluded him, despite the day he had had. Or perhaps it was because of the day he had had. In less than twenty-four hours, he had gone from running away from being a Watcher to somehow agreeing to secretly work with the Slayer right under the Council’s nose. With a sigh, he pushed himself into a sitting position and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. Somehow he didn’t think he’d get much sleep.

He still didn’t quite know how they were going to find the nearest Hellmouth. He vaguely remembered his father saying it was in a place with ‘sun’ in its name. Frowning to himself, Ripper pushed himself to his feet, and began to root around the room. There had to be a road map somewhere in the house, surely. If he could just get hold of a map of California, he might be able to figure out where they were next headed.

His search for a map took him out of the sitting room and to the hallway, where he finally uncovered a map tucked away in the drawer of a console table holding the phone. It was crumpled and torn around the edges, but it would do the job well enough, so Ripper took it back to his bed on the couch and scoured it by lamplight.  


It took a lot less time than he’d expected- his eyes had sought out the name of the town like a homing beacon. Sunnydale. It was, perhaps, a couple of hours north of Los Angeles, but didn’t look like it would be too far to travel. They could make it there in a couple of hours, maybe less if they could get direct transport. Satisfied that he now had an answer for where they were heading, if Buffy was still interested in leaving L.A, Ripper dropped the map onto the coffee table and settled back down in his makeshift bed.

He was almost asleep when he heard a thump and a surprised cry coming from the direction of Buffy’s room. Ripper was awake immediately. He listened carefully, wondering if the teenager had just tripped over something on her way to the bathroom. But then there was another thump and another cry, and Ripper was on his feet and running for Buffy’s room.

When he got there, he could hear Buffy crying, pleading with someone, and without thinking he burst through the door.

* * *

The man in the middle of Buffy’s room blinked at Ripper, and then smirked coldly. Something about the dark-haired stranger set Ripper’s teeth on edge, and not just because he’d broken into a seventeen year old girl’s bedroom.

“Well well,” he sneered, swinging his gaze back to Buffy with a leer, “looks like someone has a thing for older men.”

“Oi,” Ripper retaliated instinctively. “I’m not that bloody old.”

Buffy sniffled, but she still glared up at the dark-haired man. “Get out, Angel.” Ripper saw her gaze flit, briefly to a wooden trunk near the door. 

As Angel continued to leer at Buffy, Ripper slid closer to the trunk.

“I’m wounded, Buffy,” Angel said in a tone that suggested he was anything but. “Is that any way to speak to your one true love?”

“You’re not him,” Buffy retaliated angrily. “You’re just a demon wearing his face.”

Angel laughed at that, shaking his head as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather pants. “Oh, Buffy. There’s been a demon wearing this face longer than you’ve been alive.” He stepped closer to her then, leaning in close. “Don’t tell me you thought I was a good guy?” 

He laughed again, and Ripper froze with one hand on the trunk. He could see Buffy trembling, but she was standing her ground. Quickly, he flipped open the trunk, and found it full of weapons. Grabbing a stake, Ripper tossed it to Buffy. She caught it and glared up at Angel.

“I should stake you where you stand,” Buffy told him lowly.

Angel responded by arching an eyebrow at her. “Do you want to do this with my true face-” He vamped out. “- Or the face you fell in love with?” His face went back to normal and he smiled smugly at Buffy in a way that made Ripper’s skin crawl.

“Which face did you kill my parents with?” she fired back, arching her own eyebrow.

There was a smirk on the vampire’s face then. “The same face you saw when we made love.”

Ripper felt sick at those words. He’d known that the Council had had some issues with Buffy, but sleeping with a vampire? His mind flitted back to earlier that night, when Buffy had admitted the reason she was Watcher-less.

_“Merrick killed himself because there was this... There was a vampire, who wanted to hurt me. Like, really hurt me. And he knew that the best way to hurt me was to go after those closest to me.”_

She’d let a vampire into her home, her heart, and her bed. Something itched at the back of Ripper’s brain, a long-forgotten memory of something he’d read as a boy. Angelus- the one with the angelic face. There’d been rumours something had happened to him which had caused him to flee Europe for North America roughly a hundred years ago, but no Watcher had ever discovered what it had been. 

“Oh, look at him,” Angel laughed, tearing Ripper from his thoughts. The vampire was smirking at him in a way Ripper really didn’t like. 

Slowly, Ripper crouched down to retrieve a cross from Buffy’s weapons chest. Wouldn’t hurt to be prepared, after all.

“Poor new Watcher, hasn’t been clued in on us, has he?” Angel continued, taking a step towards Ripper only to be stopped by Buffy intervening and pressing the stake warningly against his chest. “Bit younger than your previous one,” the vampire continued to the slayer conversationally. “I wonder if he tastes better than Merrick did.”

“You never tasted Merrick,” Buffy snapped back, but her voice wavered.

The vampire smirked down at her. “Not while he was alive, no. But all that lovely warm blood was just going to waste, spilling all over the sidewalk. Somebody had to clean it up.” He leered, and Buffy paled.

“Buffy, get behind me,” Ripper instructed as he stepped forward, cross clenched in his outstretched hand.

“I’m fine,” Buffy responded, eyes not leaving Angel’s.

Ripper clenched his jaw. “I’m sure you are,” he ground out, “but just get behind me anyway.”

“Why?” Buffy asked, brow furrowing while Angel watched the unfolding argument with glee. “I know what I’m doing. More than you do, anyway.”

By now, Ripper was side by side with Buffy, and he tried to push her behind him but she stood her ground.

“Are you stupid?” he snapped at her, ducking down so they were eye to eye. “I said get behind me.”

“Thought you said you didn’t want to be my Watcher,” Buffy reminded him petulantly, finally tearing her gaze from Angel. “So what makes you think you can give me orders?”

Ripper rolled his eyes and growled at that remark. “Oh, bloody hell, I’m trying to save you, alright?”

Angel smirked. “Go on Buffy,” he goaded. “Let him be your knight in shining armour. You can repay him later.” He completed the statement with a waggle of his eyebrows, leaving no mistake about what he’d been hinting about when talking about repayment. 

Buffy glowered at the vampire. “I don’t need a knight in shining armour. I can look after myself.”

“Shame,” Angel said with a shrug. “Bet your new friend was looking forward to you rewarding him.” He turned his attention to Ripper. “She could do with a little practice, but I broke her in for you.”

With that, Ripper let out a growl and launched himself at the vampire. He slammed the stake into the man’s chest and pushed him back towards the open window. Angel let out a growl and shoved back at Ripper, before launching himself out the window and running off into the night. Breathing heavily, Ripper turned back to Buffy.

“Want to tell me what that was about?”

* * *

Buffy made tea. Ripper tried not to grimace as he drank it.

They’d retired to the sitting room, sitting side by side on Ripper’s makeshift bed. Buffy was sat cross-legged, and her knee touched the side of Ripper’s thigh. It was oddly reassuring, after the run-in they’d had with Angel, to feel that little bit of contact between them.

“So,” Buffy said after a long, suffocating silence. “I suppose I owe you an explanation.” Her tone aimed for levity, and missed the target spectacularly.

Ripper said nothing. He figured Buffy was embarrassed enough without him making sly digs at her.

Buffy sighed then, and placed her half-empty mug on the coffee table. “When I first met Angel, he didn’t tell me who he was, and I didn’t know he was a vampire. It wasn’t long after I’d been called, and Merrick was still trying to teach me how to use my senses to find vampires. He introduced himself to me as a friend, gave me this necklace,” she pulled at the silver cross around her neck, “and told me to watch my back. After that, he’d sometimes show up when I needed help, fought on my side. I never questioned it, and neither did Merrick. And then, a few months later he ended up back here after we were both attacked by some uber vamps. Mom was working late, and Dad was out of town on business, so I offered to patch him up. One thing led to another, and we...” she trailed off, swallowing thickly. “We kissed. And he vamped out. I freaked, and he took off out my bedroom window.”

Ripper’s eyes narrowed. He had a feeling that they’d only reached the interval in this production, rather than the curtain call.

“I didn’t tell Merrick,” she admitted quietly after a pause. “I was too scared. I felt so stupid. I’d trusted him. I’d invited him into my home. And he was a vampire.” Buffy took a deep breath. “Lots of stuff happened after that. Angel and I avoided each other for a while. Well, I avoided him. I could always sense he was lurking in the shadows, watching out for me. And we eventually got back together last year, started hanging out together. Angel explained he’d been cursed with a soul because of all the bad things he’d done since being turned, but he never really went into details. It didn’t seem to matter, he was fighting on my side regardless of whether he was human or not. That was enough for me. We started dating, and a few months ago on my seventeenth birthday, we slept together.” She paused, looked up, and finally met Ripper’s eyes. “We slept together and the curse broke. Turns out there was some stupid clause about it breaking if he ever had a moment of perfect happiness. He lost his soul, and turned into... Well, what you saw tonight.”

“Angelus,” Ripper murmured.

Buffy looked momentarily surprised, before nodding. “Yeah. Merrick warned me to watch my back, told me about the things Angelus had done.” She shuddered. “For the first few weeks, he just sort of hung around in the shadows while I patrolled. Tried to intimidate me. Then things got worse. I found a drawing of me sleeping on my pillow one morning. He’d been in my room. He left flowers on the doorstep for me. He started coming after my parents, told them I’d slept with him. He wanted to tear my life apart bit by bit and he was succeeding.” Tears were trailing down her cheeks then. “By the time the end of the school year rolled around, I’d pretty much decided I had to stop him. He was killing people at school, torturing them, and leaving them as ‘gifts’ for me to find. He came after me and Merrick one night on patrol. Merrick told me to run, and he shot himself so Angel couldn’t turn him. Then Angel came after my parents and killed them too.”

Ripper blinked. He didn’t really know what to say. Apparently, Buffy didn’t either as she went back to staring despondently across the room. Sat side by side and just staring at the opposite wall, a heavy silence fell over the pair of them. Ripper knew he should say something, do something, to offer the teenager some comfort. But he was completely out of his depth and still processing what he’d been told.

He bumped his knee against Buffy’s, just to let her know he was still there. She gave him a shy smile as she watched him out the corner of her eye. She bumped his leg back.

“If I were a Watcher,” Ripper began conversationally, putting his mug on the coffee table and leaning back on the sofa as he stretched out, “I’d be expected to wag my finger and scold you for that. Rule one is don’t let vampires into your house. And I’m fairly certain ‘don’t sleep with vampires’ is also in the rulebook somewhere.” He shot her a grin to let her know he was winding her up. When she gave a tentative smile back, he softened a little. “But what Travers doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” he continued more gently. Then he shrugged. “Anyway, I’m not even a Watcher so I don’t answer to Travers or any of those ponces in London. But I am gonna tell you something, and you have to listen.”  


Buffy’s eyes went wide, and she nodded uncertainly as Ripper stared hard at her. Satisfied she was going to listen, he nodded to himself.

“Whatever you might think, it wasn’t your fault, Buffy. The Council, and any idiot Travers would send to be your Watcher, would want you to think you made a mistake. They’d want you to believe it was your fault, that you screwed up, and that you must now do everything they tell you to do just so you don’t screw up again. Maybe you made a mistake. Maybe you slept with the wrong guy. But we’ve all done that.”

Tears were welling in Buffy’s eyes again. “I’d thought everything out,” she admitted tearfully. “It’s not like I rushed into sleeping with him. I kept putting it off, kept talking myself out of it. I wanted everything to be perfect, you know?”

Ripper leaned forward then, and Buffy tucked herself into his side. “There was no way you could know that Angel was Angelus, and there was no way you could know about the curse, especially if your Watcher didn’t even know. The Council would want you to feel guilty about what happened to Merrick, and your parents, and it’s alright to mourn them. But you weren’t responsible for their deaths. And if anyone tells them otherwise, you point them in my direction and I’ll set them straight.”

A watery chuckle escaped the slayer then, and Ripper squeezed her arm.

“I was scared you’d be mad,” she admitted quietly as she looked up at him. “I screwed up, got people hurt, and even if it’s Angelus’s fault and not mine, I can’t help but feel guilty, you know? And I figured you’d hate me, the same way the Council clean-up team clearly hated me when they came to fix the house. They didn’t say anything, but I could see it in their eyes. I’m supposed to be the Chosen One, Ripper, and all I did was get people killed.”

Ripper pulled her just that little bit closer then. “Look,” he said roughly, “I’ve already told you. It wasn’t your fault. I’m not going to lay the blame at your feet. All you’re gonna get from me is my support, and my respect.”

Buffy smiled tearfully up at him then. “Thanks, Ripper.” She eyed the map on the coffee table. “Found where we’re headed yet?”

Ripper pulled away from her to retrieve the map and unfold it. “It doesn’t look too far. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

Buffy hummed absently in agreement as she looked around the room. “I suppose I should sell this place. We could do with the money.”

Placing the map across their legs, Ripper frowned. “We’re heading north, to a place called Sunnydale,” he told her, pointing it out on the map. “You don’t have to sell the place just yet, if you don’t want to. I can try and get some more money, and if need be I’ll find a job or something.”

Buffy arched an eyebrow at him. “How manly of you,” she teased. “Do you think there’ll be many jobs for an out-of-work English college dropout like yourself where we’re going?”

Ripper arched his own eyebrow at her cheeky dig. “Only one way to find out.”


End file.
